"You can't get there from here, but if you could, you'd have to take the train." Ghost Train, Sean O'Brien's fourth collection of poems, rides the network of routes into history, politics, autobiography, and the imaginative region where they meet. The tone of this new collection is no longer angry and political--a departure from his previous works, The Indoor Park, The Frighteners, and HMS Glasshouse--but has become almost elegiac and celebratory, sombre and "romantic." His most subtle work to date, the poems are not mellow and accepting of a post-Thatcherite Britain, but more aghast and troubled. O'Brien's writing is traditional in style, but he deploys an altogether contemporary vocabulary and his sense of rhythm is paramount. This is a moving book.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
`his particular trick is to balance an edgy forthrightness against surprisingly complex though-processes and a considerable sophistication of technique ... rewarding new book ... Verse as strong and truthful as O'Brien's latest comes from hard graft, stamina, and not trying to con the examiner.' Alan Brownjohn, Sunday Times
`O'Brien has many fans among poetry readers, and the award confirms his position as one of the country's most significant younger poets.' Giles Foden, The Guardian
`Ghost Train has a more nostalgic hue than O'Brien's previous books, marking a softening of his work.' Richard Tyrrell, The Independent
`the poems offer many pleasures ... enjoyable, touching and sometimes very funny' Vernon Scannell, Sunday Telegraph
`O'Brien is a clear-headed writer, a punctilious reader - and not half bad as a comic turn either ... These poems have a delicate ghostliness about them.' Michael Glover, The Independent
`a strikingly unified and successful book of poems that - deservingly - won him the Forward Prize 1995 ... Ghost Train is as impressive a book as I have read in years, idiosyncratic, beautiful and shrewd. It is a book that will tell future generations about us, and marks Sean O'Brien's arrival as an important poet.' Michael Hofmann, The Times
`O'Brien has many fans among poetry readers, and the award confirms his position as one of the country's most significant younger poets.' Giles Foden, The Guardian
`Ghost Train has a more nostalgic hue than O'Brien's previous books, marking a softening of his work.' Richard Tyrrell, The Independent
`the poems offer many pleasures ... enjoyable, touching and sometimes very funny' Vernon Scannell, Sunday Telegraph
`O'Brien is a clear-headed writer, a punctilious reader - and not half bad as a comic turn either ... These poems have a delicate ghostliness about them.' Michael Glover, The Independent
`a strikingly unified and successful book of poems that - deservingly - won him the Forward Prize 1995 ... Ghost Train is as impressive a book as I have read in years, idiosyncratic, beautiful and shrewd. It is a book that will tell future generations about us, and marks Sean O'Brien's arrival as an important poet.' Michael Hofmann, The Times
About the Author
About the Author:
Sean O'Brien is joint poetry reviewer for the Sunday Times. In 1992-4 he was Northern Arts Literary Fellow and in 1993 he received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for HMS Greenhouse.
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